


A Pragmatic Approach to Myth

by paxlux



Category: Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy - John Le Carré
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-09-12
Updated: 2011-09-12
Packaged: 2017-10-23 16:56:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,202
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/252645
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paxlux/pseuds/paxlux
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Guillam is waiting.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Pragmatic Approach to Myth

**Author's Note:**

> I highly regard this book, it is one of my all-time favorites; thus, this is purely self-indulgent and I should be ashamed. Not de-Americanized past anything I do on the fly. Guillam and Smiley, after.
> 
> Please do not repost anywhere else without my express authorization, this includes PDFs and downloadable files.

Some days he thinks he sees shadows. Some days he thinks he sees cars. In the real world, shadows and cars exist everywhere without second thought, people don't even notice, but in the underlayer, they mean something. Omens. Danger you have to keep one-two-three steps ahead of, because when you leave the Circus, you've never left, you've never really gone, you're only waiting.

Guillam is waiting.

He clenches his fists.

He's stretching out his leaving, so as to squeeze every drop he can from it, seeing and listening and absorbing it all, just in case, just in case. One afternoon, he was heading out and he heard one of the youngsters say to a pretty-eyed mother making tea, Smiley, that doddering old man, didn't he fall off his crumpet, go a bit mad?

She saw Guillam standing there in the weak shadows cast by the yellow lights and shook her head minutely in warning because he could've dismantled that bright young thing in his Cambridge tie as if he were furniture, methodically, piece by piece, and don't forget the screws, push them in a little tighter before you let him feel any relief.

He made a mental note to send someone over to Blankenship's flat and remind him that his history rests with his elders and if he wants a future, he best learn from history instead of mocking it. He idly wondered if Tarr was in town.

"Peter," Smiley calls from the study and Guillam lets the curtains fall back. No shadows today. "Peter."

It's safety in his name, because Smiley says his given name differently since he's retired, since he's out and the Circus is a nightmare wrapped in a building he's locked the door on.

"George," he says in reply, and it's a luxury.

"Where is that file?"

"Which one?" Guillam goes to the study with its large windows; it's good to see the shadows creep up on you, but it also means the shadows can see you.

It's the price they pay. "Which file," he says again from the doorway and Smiley turns, hands full of paperwork and his glasses.

He gives Guillam the papers, rubbing at his eyes. "Dreadnought." Smiley slips his glasses on, gaze focusing on him and Guillam smiles.

"Nostalgia?" he says, crossing over to the huge walnut desk, an atrocity left to him by his father and he didn't want it, but Smiley likes it for some reason.

"Peter, such a dirty word. Nostalgia is nothing but things remembered incorrectly," he admonishes, waving a hand and Guillam moves the dagger paperweight to shuffle a pile like playing cards.

"I think Connie would disagree with you."

"Ah, Connie. Connie's a special case," Smiley says. "She remembers like no one else."

Her boys, Guillam thinks, she always loved her boys and she _knew_.

Smiley glances out the window. "This is more like..."

"Ghost hunting," Guillam supplies and Smiley nods, smiling.

"Ghost hunting," he agrees.

They're collecting, like those tense days when Guillam passed through the hallways, quiet, a man condemned by the possibility of things to come, pulling files and secrets as if they were teeth, bloody roots and all.

They're collecting because Connie can remember and keep herself warm, but they need everything in ink and paper, because they aren't nostalgic. They collect just in case.

Guillam finds Dreadnought, looking for the appropriate pile to put it in, and Smiley says from the window, "Did you find that book?”

“What one? Oh, the Herodotus. Yes. I’d left it upstairs.”

“How about a walk."

  "Around to the church?"  

"Around to the church."

Smiley always seems to have sadness in his pockets, heavy as small stones, but he likes to walk, slow and steady, one foot in front the other.

Guillam hasn't figured out if his walks are an eyes-out approach, searching for the artists: the woman marking the adverts in the newspaper, the man drinking a coffee on a bench, the couple kissing and sharing a cigarette.

Or maybe they're just walks, a way to walk out of his own mind and disappear for a while at least.

It's a routine and routines are dangerous, but they've survived worse; they are dangerous and Guillam thinks Smiley could domino-topple the world if he chose. And Guillam would help him, one foot in front of the other.

Smiley once said, I'm an old man, who'd want to bother with me.

They can survive routine.

No babysitters.

Guillam fetches their coats and Smiley locks the doors.

They walk.

There are security measures on the house and they don't think about it. Smiley shrugs once as if he’s decided something, but Guillam doesn’t ask.

"Peter, only a few days left," Smiley says, searching for his gloves, it's chilly and Guillam looks at him.

His jumper is a little crooked at the collar and he could do with a new pair of gloves, and shoes, his birthday is next month even though Guillam knows he'd rather forget and Guillam thinks, A few days and then years.

"A few days," he repeats. "Just one or two things left to clear from the office." His scarf is hanging on the back of the door, he suddenly remembers, but then Smiley catches his arm.

"The mothers will want to give you something before you go. Cake," Smiley says, mouth curved in a lopsided smile and Guillam grins.

"Cake, sure, George. They're sentimental. But the janitors will just give me a boot to the arse."

Smiley laughs, low, always low as if others are listening, but Guillam can tell he's really amused, his face crinkled with pleasure, eyes squinting behind his glasses.

Then Smiley squeezes his arm, a surreptitious gesture, playing at being the older man with uncertain footing and Guillam looks at the road ahead.

A man in a fedora, nice coat, worn briefcase. A girl rides up behind them on a bicycle, past them, green scarf, red hair, and she keeps going, beyond the man in the fedora, beyond the post office, and another man comes around the corner, stops the man in the fedora with greetings, hullo, Paul, how’re you, oh hullo, Stephen, haven’t seen you around, and Guillam steers them to the opposite side of the street, Smiley watching the paving stones.

It’s a habit, like brushing his teeth or putting sugar in his tea or straightening his tie.

Guillam is waiting.

“Will it go away?” he says, and he realises he’s said it out loud, and he flushes, talks fast to answer himself. “Novice question, George.”

“Not at all. And no,” Smiley replies. He lets go of Guillam, arm slipping away, and he puts his hands in his pockets. “No.”

Guillam knows, but it’s different hearing it from Smiley and the church is coming over the hill.

The two men have moved on behind them and the girl is long gone, swirling green and red and white. It’s always in threes, he thinks.

Smiley goes to the church because it’s the prominent building in the area, the pride of the town, and thus, it makes sense for him to walk to it in the falling dusk, or any other time, why not go see the church, it’s a thing of blessed architecture, a shopkeeper told Smiley and Guillam guesses he took it to heart.

The Circus used to be a thing of blessed architecture and now it’s crumbled into dust in his memory and Guillam’s about to abandon it, like the Romans running from England.

In ruins, but still there, still alive, a past that won’t let them forget.

The fence of the church isn’t stone or wrought iron, but a mixture, stone shored up over the years with wrought iron, gaps filled after the Blitz and there are still pockmarked areas of earth in the churchyard from debris and shrapnel.

The gate is open today and Smiley touches it, like he does every time, a charm for a non-superstitious man, a reminder because this is what he has now and he looks sad. Guillam’s been inside the church once, but Smiley doesn’t go beyond the gate.

Guillam says, “Dinner. Blind Bess,” which isn’t the real name of the pub, but the sign has a maiden with white eyes and the name ‘Bess’ scrawled underneath. Only the family knows the real name and they don’t use it either.

No one uses real names and Smiley says, “A few days, Peter,” and Guillam laughs under his breath.

“Then what shall we do? Read?”

“Garden?”

Grinning, Guillam says, “Breed corgis?”

“No, no, prize vegetables.”

“To cook? Maybe it’s safer to reminisce over chess?”

“Wax nostalgic?” Smiley says, smiling again, the church’s spire throwing its shadow across his body. “One of these days, they will just be stories and we won’t have to worry about them anymore.”

“Fairy tales.”

“Indeed,” Smiley says and he steps out of the shadow, heading down the street towards Blind Bess. “Tales of caution and warning.”

“Here be dragons,” Guillam says and Smiley nods.

“We never had a Dragon,” he says, licks his lips, and Guillam hears the capital, the proper name. “We should have.”

“To slay it,” Guillam replies. “George.”

Smiley catches the joke, quick as light, but he pauses and his eyes disappear behind a flash across his glasses. “Oh yes, to slay it. Or feed it.”

Blind Bess, and no artists around, no lamplighters are to be in the area, Guillam checked before he vanished today with old news and archived information; his heart still races when he reaches the door and steps out into the world, he breathes as if he’s free.

There’s nothing except dinner and Smiley talking about a day in winter when he was a boy and it snowed so much he thought he was dreaming. He ran out into the snow without a coat or shoes or gloves; that’s how he learned to look before he leapt because he literally leapt into a snowdrift and Guillam laughs, out loud this time and no one glances around at them.

He shares his own lesson: mud, not snow and he’d carefully removed his clothes first and Smiley laughs, hands moving restless on the table, smudging condensation.

“You still looked first,” Smiley points out and Guillam says, “Yes, but I just didn’t care.”

The pub isn’t anything like the dark-panelled and deep-seated clubs of London, but they have a corner, they face the door, this never changes and the first time they went there, Smiley saw the exits before he did because Guillam was watching him catalogue them.

Smiley pays and night is finally falling when they get to the street. From windows all along the way, square patches of light stream into their path and they walk through them instead of around them and Guillam pretends he’s looking for stars.

“We won’t have to worry about the people in them,” Smiley says and there isn’t a secret in how he says it, he shares with Guillam as if he can’t help it.

He hasn’t put on his gloves and it’s chilly; Guillam shivers down into his coat. There’s a snap to the air and all he can hear is their footsteps, the way they walk to muffle the clicks on the pavement.

Guillam thinks, No, it never goes away.

Their house stands like a quiet sentinel and all the security is in place. Guillam should get ferrets over, tell them it’s a practice run on a house like one the lamplighters are looking to use; send Smiley to the library and let them clean and later, he can discreetly lose the address. He has a few days left to get it finished.

Even so, Smiley switches on the radio and they only turn on the necessary lights, flipping them off behind them as they move around the house and to anyone else, the files in the study look like normal research papers, an old man’s retiring passion for botany or the histories of ancient peoples.

Smiley heads to bed with a cup of tea, the newspaper and a pen, to do the crossword and mark through adverts. Guillam reads them the next morning, jotted notes and scratches in Smiley’s handwriting. He stacks them to burn later with fallen tree branches and dead rose bushes.

He doesn’t fall asleep until late, stretched on the sofa, a book balanced on his stomach, the spine digging into his skin and this room, their living room is placed through a mistake of architectural and dimensional harmony halfway between the front door and the back, and he finds himself here when he can’t sleep.

Waiting.

He wakes on the sofa with the book’s spine digging into his throat and Smiley is making coffee, humming, and Guillam listens, tries to place the tune.

The sunlight is weak and soft-runny like a poached egg. He has two hours before work, and a few days after that.

A few days and then years, he thinks.

He stretches his way off the sofa and pulls apart the curtains with his fingertips.

A red car across the street, empty, frost on the windshield. Birdsong. Down the road, the milk lorry has stopped for a delivery.

Some days he knows he sees shadows.

**Author's Note:**

> Go read the book. Seriously.


End file.
